peasants, to translate it into French, and render it into English. But when the Welshmen came to work the mines, and the overseer addressed himself in Welsh to his own men, he found that the Breton peasantry understood his language, and without the aid of any interpreters performed the desired operations. During the Peninsula war the commanders of the Welsh regiments were surprised to find that the peasants in the north of Spain thoroughly understood them when they spoke Welsh, but did not understand them when they spoke English. Herodotus tells us that the Celtic race occupied the regions through which the Istra, or Danube, now flows, and it is very evident to the student of history that the Celts were pushed westward by the Goths, the Goths were pushed westward by the Sarmatians, who were urged in the same direction by the Scythians; thus the successive waves of population have flowed westward, and it is curious to see Irish Celts now flowing westward to America.

St. Malo is a fortified town; the Boulevard is outside the walls. The Custom House officials are arrayed in uniform, and armed with swords. They perform the duty of examining the luggage with much courtesy. There is a constant guard at the gates of the town, and the octroi, or duty, on everything which enters the town is here paid. The houses are high and very substantially built, and the streets narrow. Everything is cheap, but this will soon be changed by the steam intercourse. The table d'hôte more resembled public dinner in England than anything of the kind I had previously seen; the tables were decked out with flowers and furnished abundantly with fruits. The service was admirable, and the charge very low. Cider was the drink supplied. Wine was only

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given when ordered. Dinan, a fine old town of about 10,000 inhabitants, is a few miles from St. Malo, and can be reached by water. It has a large number of English residents, attracted partly by the beauty of the neighbourhood and partly by the cheapness of the living. Board and lodging may be had at five francs (4s.) per day.

The impression which is made on the mind of an Englishman on his arrival at a French railway terminus, especially such an one as that at St. Malo, is that there is something essentially different in the ideas which plan them: the English are plain, solid, business-like, not always convenient; the French are roomy, airy, and spacious. That at St. Malo does not come out to the high road. The entrance hardly indicates that you are entering a railway station: it is nicely laid out and planted with shrubs and interspersed with flower-beds, furnished with a choice variety of annuals and perennials. There are rustic seats in various spots, and the intending traveller who arrives too early for the train will find a seat laid in a nice pleasure-ground, very different from sitting in a close, ill-ventilated, and sometimes a very repulsive waiting-room. Some classes in England cultivate or possess a taste for flowers, and go to great expense to have them excellent. Floral shows encourage competition amongst those who

afford to go to any expense to produce the best, but the love for flowers is more predominant in France. Even in the large cities, trees are introduced into the streets, and after work, men and women take their coffee, or light wine, in the shade. In England people seem to be imbued with the idea town is town, and country is country; in France they seem to wish

to have rus in urbe, or rather urbs in rure. Our Saxon ancestors had a similar idea; every village had its commonage land; now such plots are becoming more necessary, the civic population of Great Britain being greater than the rural. I must not allow myself to be tempted into a digression on the consequences arising from this novel aspect of a nation, but return to my subject

Rennes. The ride from St. Malo to Rennes, fifty miles, occupies about two hours and a half. Rennes lies nearly due south of St. Malo. The railway connecting them was opened about eighteen months since, and is well laid out and managed.

Not a

In the vicinity of St. Malo, and for more than halfway along the line, the land is held in small farms; the fences are all clay, such as are seen in Ireland; the walls of many of the houses are constructed of a clay compost similar to that of the mud cabins of old Erin, and they are all thatched. At Combourg, which is about halfway between St. Malo and Rennes, these thatched houses cease. field is to be seen of more than a couple of acres in size, and most of them have two or three different crops. Clover grows better than in Jersey, and I saw some very good crops partly cut as green food for cattle; lucerne is also cultivated, and mangelwurzel and beet, but not turnips. Almost every second field was an apple orchard. In some the corn had been cut and removed, and the ground ploughed or dug into wide drills, in which it will remain for the winter; in others the crops are not yet removed. The fields of sarrasin are in full blossom; this crop, though largely cultivated on the Continent, is not

PRODUCTION OF BUTTER.

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grown in Great Britain or Ireland. I also noticed, in the fields, tobacco, flax, kidney beans, and melons. Such small fields, low fences, and varied tillage, is not suited for sheep, and hardly one was to be seen in the entire journey.

In the district lying between Combourg and St. Malo all the cows are tethered; some were grazing the headlands of the tilled fields, but they seemed to be taken out by the women for an airing, as I noticed several cases where the baby was on one arm and the other hand held the rope fastened to the cow's neck. The cows are a small breed, like those of Jersey, but they seem good milkers. The population is dense, and the mode of tillage must employ much labour, as hardly one field out of ten was in pasture. Between Combourg and Rennes the fields were larger. There was more pasture, the houses were slated, and herds of cattle were occasionally to be seen. Rennes is the centre of a large butter or dairy district. The farmers do not pack the butter in casks or firkins, as is done in Ireland, but they bring it to market in lumps or moshes. The butter dealer blends these lumps together, makes them suit in shade, and packs them for market. I think the value of butter shipped from St. Malo in 1864 was about equal to the entire amount of Irish butter imported into London in that year. The value of butter and eggs imported into the United Kingdom from France in 1864 was valued at one million and a half sterling. There has been a gradual diminution in the quantity of Irish butter sent to London. In the three years 1842 to 1844 it averaged 311,000 firkins per annum, while in the past three years it has not much exceeded half that quantity, though the number of milch cows

in Ireland has nearly doubled. There is an increase in the quantity of Irish butter sent to Liverpool, but if the deliveries in the two ports are added together, it will not show a great increase. The arrivals in London and Liverpool from Ireland in 1841 were 639,247 firkins, in 1861 they were 737,895; the increase is 98,648 firkins, worth about 350,000l. The number of cattle in Ireland in 1841 was 1,863,116, valued at 12,110,000l.; in 1861 it had increased to 3,527,309, the estimated value of which was 21,172,5087. The increased value represents over nine millions capital. The increased export of butter is equivalent to about 3 per cent. on the capital invested, but this does not leave anything to pay rent for the ground which feeds the cattle, nor for labour. In the butter-producing districts in Brittany, the farmers do not attempt fattening, nor have they tried to change the breed so as to get an animal more fitted for the butcher. They make it their business to encourage good milkers, and they find it to their advantage. The loss to Ireland from not attending to this point, has been very great. The prizes at nearly all the agricultural shows are given to animals for the stall, not for the dairy; and it is easy to see that the farmer loses more in butter than he gains in the value of the young stock. The greatly enlarged exports from Brittany and Normandy are obtained by a minute and careful system of husbandry, by which more food, and food of a better quality, is raised for the cows, and they pay for this care by the increased produce of the butter. The small farmers in this district also produce large quantities of poultry and eggs. In Jersey the farmers do not keep poultry, and that island imported last year over